Meet the Denver band that’s pioneering Americana black metal

Wayfarer is marking the end of an era.

While the Americana black metallers haven’t announced any definitive plans for what comes next, guitarist-vocalist Shane McCarthy sees their current tour as a good opportunity to reflect on the Denver band’s fifteen-year career so far.

“We’re not ready to talk about it much. At this moment, we’re focused on seeing this off in a good way with this tour,” he says. “Trying to do a little bit of retrospective on it. As soon as this is done, it’ll be about building up what’s next.”

Wayfarer is now on tour with Finnish psychedelic black metal group Oranssi Pazuzu, which included a hometown show at Bluebird Theater this month.

McCarthy, drummer Isaac Faulk, bassist Jamie Hansen and guitarist Joe Strong-Truscelli are still focused on American Gothic, the rock-solid 2023 album that’s full of blackened, Dust Bowl-era ballads. Each of the four-piece’s five albums was inspired by different time periods across the American West, particularly Colorado, an approach that defines Wayfarer’s signature style of extreme metal paired with gothic brooding. And now feels like the right time to celebrate everything Wayfarer’s built up until this point.

“With this specific chapter of the career, we’ve reached an apex with American Gothic, in terms of what it is we’re trying to say with the music. Therefore, we’re going to branch that out into a new direction,” McCarthy says.

“For what we’re trying to do public-facing, it’s a difficult tightrope to walk because we’re being annoyingly coy about it,” he adds. “It’s more like if you like the stuff we’ve been doing — American Gothic, A Romance with Violence, World’s Blood — come see these shows because it’s going to be the culmination of all that. Who’s to say when we’ll be doing that stuff again?”

So Wayfarer isn’t necessarily going anywhere anytime soon, which is good news, but the next step is anyone’s guess … including the band’s.

“It’s all up in the air, in truth, but also it’s more we’re focused on this right now because we want to give it its time in the sun before we move on,” McCarthy says. “We’re the type of band that we’re not just trying to exist in a very traditional subgenre of metal, like playing straight-up black metal or death metal. What we’re doing is trying to put a Colorado stamp on things. We’re trying to make something that is metal and make something that’s our own take. We’re trying to redefine the boxes of these things.”

For more than a decade, Wayfarer has been at the forefront of the resurgent Denver metal scene, alongside such bands as Blood Incantation (Faulk drums for that group, too) and Primitive Man, which has become known for new levels of extremity. McCarthy, Faulk and Hansen also play in local symphonic black-metal outfit Stormkeep, which recently announced its sophomore album, The Nocturnes of Iswylm, set for release June 12 via German label Vesperian.

“For that band, it’s already somehow been five years since we’ve done one,” McCarthy shares. “It’s less of a consistent live act, but we will do something at some point.”

That’s more good news for metalheads, as Stormkeep’s 2021 debut, Tales of Othertime, caught the attention of many in the underground with its melodramatic mix of epic wizardry, odes to dragons and ominous amulets, all set to medieval metal and dungeon synth. The album helped Stormkeep nab Westword’s blessing of Best Breakthrough Metal Band in 2022.

But since then, the camp’s kept quiet, aside from sharing instrumental EP Lost Relics in 2023, for good reason, with Wayfarer and Blood Incantation blowing up. Now, the mages are ready to return. The latest two singles, “Carnal Tapestries of Nailtorn Flesh” and “Imperious Sanguine Eroticism,” see Stormkeep explore more extreme territory through its top-notch musicianship (think the good shit — Emperor, Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir), while maintaining the previously established mystical atmosphere. Stormkeep doesn’t need to worry about a sophomore slump. Plus, the foursome debuted a new, sword-wielding vampiric look.

“It’ll be nice to get this one fired back up again,” McCarthy says.

McCarthy, Faulk and Hansen are bandmates in experimental electro black-death group Lykotonon, too. That band released its first album, Promethean Pathology, in 2022, but there’s no word on any more upcoming activity.

That’s a lot of crossover between creative endeavors, but McCarthy explains that it’s easier to keep straight than you might assume, since each band’s vision is led by a different member — Wayfarer’s is McCarthy, Faulk steers Stormkeep, and Hansen has Lykotonon — allowing the others to assume various roles simultaneously.     

“We don’t necessarily view them as side projects,” McCarthy says, “because each one is such its own world.”

As if he’s not busy enough, McCarthy is also a co-organizer of the annual Fire in the Mountains festival, now in its second year on Montana’s Blackfeet Nation in East Glacier Park from July 23 to July 26. This year’s lineup is absolutely stacked, headlined by the surprise return of post-metal legends Neurosis and an exclusive reunion performance by Denver’s own Sixteen Horsepower, the alt-country band that inspired Wayfarer.  

“Fire in the Mountains is all-consuming right now,” McCarthy says. “It’s exciting. It’s getting more real all the time with all the new artists, second time in a new location.”

Originally a small DIY event hosted outside of Jackson, Wyoming, the first official fest was held in 2018 and has grown in scope and reach ever since, thanks to its initiatives and partnerships with the Blackfeet Nation and Firekeeper Alliance, a mental health and suicide prevention nonprofit serving Indigenous communities that are impacted by higher suicidal-distress rates nationally than non-reservation locales.  

“All of that has changed it so much in a positive way,” McCarthy says. “It’s a whirlwind of change. I feel like we’re always catching up to where it’s at, but it’s super exciting and an honor. It’s about being a part of something.

“It’s wild, man,” he adds. “It started so small and self-contained and grassroots, so to be at this point where it is becoming known around the world is pretty insane.”

McCarthy is in California with Wayfarer when he takes a moment to talk about everything that’s going on in his world. He’s gracious about sharing such details, but is quick to bring the discussion back to the present, in which he and the band are looking back one last time at all they’ve done before marching forward to what lies ahead, whatever that may be.

“Musically, we accomplished a lot of what we were trying to accomplish with fleshing out what the Wayfarer sound is, or at least was, this confluence of Denver Sound, Americana, Western and extreme metal,” McCarthy says with a wink. “I feel like we can see the arc of the last couple albums more completely, and are on this tour trying to reflect on that.

“We finally understand it now,” he concludes. “I think it’s very established — what it is, how we work. Knowing what it is, we’re able to push it to new places more confidently because we know our team and where we want to go.”